Posted on 06/03/2007 4:19:42 PM PDT by mdittmar
I know; but I still haven't seen an adequate explanation of how the usual motivations like graft and corruption would suddenly motivate nearly an entire political party to voluntarily "throw the game". I always thought politicians preferred to receive bribes as a steady income over the long term. If someone's giving them special one-time bonuses for abandoning their seats, I should think the amounts of money involved would be difficult to cover up and we'd be hearing about it.
They're in hiding because they didn't want to have to read anymore stories about how they were booed. They're all a bunch of sleazy cowards. Larry Craig of Idaho is another one.
Now that’s the time to take a stand - in the primaries.
Thank you.
IS IT AMNESTY?
If someone steals your car – and they get to keep your car – that’s amnesty. Suppose a thief stole your car, but they can just pay a fine and keep the car.
Ordinarily, when we are talking about crime and punishment, criminals pay a fine and go to jail but they also must return the car. The punishment does not begin until the stolen property is RETURNED or recovered.
If you can steal a $20,000 car, pay a $5,000 fine, and KEEP the $20,000 car — for a NET GAIN of $15,000, WHERE’S THE PUNISHMENT? That is amnesty. (And the statistics show that illegal aliens will get $21,000 in benefits every year, net of taxes they pay.)
Illegal aliens must leave the USA, not just pay a fine. Under the AMNESTY (there I said it) bill, illegal aliens will get to KEEP what they stole — illegal presence and illegally working inside the USA.
Also, the immigration amnesty bill DOES NOT REQUIRE THE BORDER TO BE CLOSED. The deal allows 12 million invaders to gain instant amnesty with a “Z” visa – even if the border has not been secured. Illegal aliens don’t need citizenship to work, so the border never needs to be secured. The “Z” visa goes into effect immediately.
Then, millions more will follow, by getting false affidavits from their friends that they were in the USA before January 1, 2007.
THIS SHOULD BE CALLED THE OSAMA BIN LADEN / AL QAEDA WELCOME MAT BILL OF 2007. Al Qaeda can walk into the country any time they want, and simply submit fake affidavits when they arrived.
I live in Chicago... You are telling my story.
I’m frustrated that I can’t even complain to the Republicans.
OK, no dead women.
It would be tinfoil territory to say that Mexico HAS photographs of Bush from his binge-drinking days living wild in Mexico.
I think it is fair game to say that Bush’s actions make no sense and that WOULD BE the only possible explanation. It is just another way of emphasizing that Bush’s actions are bizarre.
What is the population of Mexico? At some point, even the upper crust Mexicans are going to realize that allowing so many of their poorer citizens escape to the North will affect them personally. A 120 million number doesn’t seem realistic...it would destroy Mexico as a viable country!
Dear Bob:
Thank you for contacting me about the current immigration reform debate in the Senate. I appreciate having the benefit of your perspective on this important issue.
Unchecked unauthorized immigration unquestionably is having significant adverse effects on American workers and on some of our communities’ health and education infrastructure. The challenge facing President Bush and Congress is how to stop the flow of immigrants coming illegally across our borders and deal with those who are already living and working in this country illegally.
The Senate is currently considering immigration reform legislation authored by Senators Kennedy (D-MA) and Kyl (R-AZ) and supported by President Bush. This bill would tighten border security, increase enforcement against employers who hire illegal workers, establish a process by which undocumented workers and their families who may have entered the United States illegally but are now contributing and responsible members of society can earn citizenship after paying fines and learning English, and create a temporary program for foreign workers who must return to their homeland after a specified period of time.
The Senate is expected to debate the Kennedy/Kyl immigration reform bill through early June. Many amendments to the bill will be considered, and the underlying legislation could change dramatically. I will be following these deliberations closely.
The most controversial elements of the Kennedy/Kyl bill is its path to citizenship and the new point system it proposes for future immigration. I understand the strong feeling within Illinois that undocumented immigrants should not be rewarded for flouting U.S. law. And I appreciate that many Americans feel we should just seal our borders and deport undocumented workers currently living in the country. However, it is significant that the Department of Homeland Security recognizes that identifying and deporting 12 million undocumented workers currently working in this country would be both difficult logistically and disruptive to the American economy. Further, I am concerned with the proposed change under a new points system to reduce the emphasis we place on uniting families in our immigration system.
I agree with President Bush who said: “Some in this country argue that the solution is to deport every illegal immigrant, and that any proposal short of this amounts to amnesty. I disagree. It is neither wise, nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border. There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant, and a program of mass deportation. That middle ground recognizes there are differences between an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently, and someone who has worked here for many years, and has a home, a family, and an otherwise clean record.”
Again, thank you for contacting me. You may be assured that I have heard your views on this issue.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama
United States Senator
P.S. Our system does not allow direct response to this email. However, if you would like to contact me again, please use the form on the website: http://obama.senate.gov/contact/
Stay up to date with Barack’s work in the Senate and on issues of importance to Illinois. Subscribe to the weekly podcast here: http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/
BUMP. Amnesty is a sure way to destroy this country. On Monday lets start calling and calling.
Not if they are losing the lowest rung of their society that are are drag on their treasury just like they will be a drag on ours. On top of that they send tens of billions of dollars home. Just think what it would do for the US if we lost the financial drag of the bottom 30 million and they sent a couple hundred billion dollars back.
‘One thing is certain in this hungry world: no regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters." None other than Ronald Reagan uttered these words, three years before he was elected president of the United States.
For the last several years I have tried to bring this kind of common sense to the shaping of immigration policy. Still there is no shortage of opinions about the best way to address this issue of national importance, and certainly no shortage of criticism. We can all agree that people must not be allowed to enter the United States illegally, and those who have done so must be held accountable. I have backed that belief with actions.
I voted for border fencing and helped pass the Byrd-Craig Amendment providing immediate funds to hire 500 new Border Patrol agents and establish 1,950 detention beds for illegal immigrants being held for criminal activity. I worked to bring a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fugitive operations unit to the Treasure Valley to round up criminal aliens fleeing the law.
Our laws must be enforced vigorously. The 1986 immigration law brought us to where we are today because it had no teeth.
The White House/Senate proposal now under debate does have teeth. Those here illegally would not get "amnesty," — there is no free pass for transgressions. They will pay fines, must learn English and meet many stiff requirements to qualify for temporary legal status. To apply for a green card, they must wait some eight years until the current backlog is cleared — no jumping ahead of those who followed the rules. And none of these reforms will commence until certain border and internal security standards are met.
Mass deportation of all illegal immigrants is not a realistic or feasible solution. Proponents of this idea overlook the economic disruption, massive costs and potential violations of civil liberties (of citizen and immigrant alike) in law enforcement searching door-to-door for illegal immigrants, and shipping them around the globe.
Some illegal immigrants may come from Mexico, or Central America, but they also come from Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and scores of other countries. In the absence of a maple leaf, it can be tough to pick out a Canadian. You simply can't identify illegal immigrants by the way they look, the language they speak, or their line of work.
It is no overstatement to say that our nation's economy — current and future — is at stake in this debate. Most analysts believe that a nation must maintain a birthrate of 2 or 2.1 children per childbearing woman to keep its population from shrinking. A shrinking population is an economic disaster, because not enough people will be born to fill jobs or pay taxes to support government programs — unless a country allows controlled immigration. This happened to Japan, Russia and much of western Europe. The United States' birthrate is 2.1 — right at that tipping point.
The bill the Senate is debating attempts to keep the crops from rotting and our economy growing, all while maintaining the unique character of America. It would shift our immigration laws to focus on skills instead of family ties in figuring out who should get in. Its merit-based system rewards education, hard work, learning English — behaviors that promote assimilation into American culture.
Another thing we can all agree on in this debate — the status quo does not work. I am working to solve this problem, because I believe that's what the people of Idaho elected me to do — to solve problems instead of ignore them.
Larry Craig, Republican, is a United States senator from Idaho.
Infrastructure? INFRASTRUCTURE?!? We can’t absorb this many people at one, not with them all, effectively, wanting coverage under our ‘social servises’. Are yo a working taxpayer? the STFU and get back to WORK, we need your taxes to PAY for this.
Please grant me AMNESTY for my spelling errors :^)
Any of these skunks that still have eyebrows are nowhere NEAR close enough to the heat from their constituents! Burn ‘em, and keep burning them!
Republicans need to start talking about the real COSTS of what it will take to support these illegals. Democrats love to cry about how much money it is costing us for the war in Iraq. They need to start worrying what 100 million new illegals will cost this country over 30 years. The costs are staggering.
Uh, I didn't vote for him. He was already in office when I moved to South Carolina.
<< Republicans need to start talking about the real COSTS of what it will take to support these illegals. >>
As I pointed out on another thread, these senators who claim this benefits the economy are completely wrong EVEN on this economy point.
The BURDEN on the economy from bringing in such a large number of uneducated unskilled foreigners to do jobs that bring very little in earnings to the people is much greater financially than the BENEFIT the economy gets from, for example, cheaper lettuce, etc.
For each lettuce picker there will probably be another 2-3 people family members who also are legalized. And because the following generation of this family will mostly be unwilling to pick lettuce, we may end up economically, for each cheap lettuce picker we use now, bearing the cost of as many as 9-10 new low-income low-skilled people who will be heavy users of the welfare, school and criminal justice systems and not be willing to pick lettuce and contribute far less in taxes than government benefits provided for them.
The economic cost of the future value of the free public education, school lunches, unpaid medical care, the various welfare programs, EITC, the increase in prisons, police, etc. attributable to all of these people imported to get that one lettuce picker all outweigh the benefit to the economy from that one cheap lettuce picker.
That this is ignored by Senator Graham and our political elites is because these economic costs are paid by third parties, mostly by taxpayers, and are therefore somewhat hidden.
And the ones who benefit greatly in a very narrow sense are the businesses like the lettuce growers who have reduced labor costs and get to shift these much larger hidden costs onto other people.
And these businesses who employ the dirt-cheap illegals have people like Graham in their pocket.
Mine are Clinton and Shumer. A lost cause for us, for sure.
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